A portrait of Truman Capote, born Truman Streckfus Persons, (1924 - 1984), American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright whose early writing extended the Southern Gothic tradition, though he later developed a more journalistic approach in the novel "In Cold Blood" (1965; film 1967), which, together with "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1958; film 1961), remains his best-known work.